I saw something very interesting and heartwarming while I was on the Paizo message boards last night. Here's the thread in it's original context. To summarize, this guy went to Japan and, while there, visited Akihabara, the capital of Tokyo's male geek population. So he visits this shop called "Yellow Submarine," and what does he find?

Dungeons and Dragons stuff. Some in English, some in Japanese.

It is deeply gratifying to see "Players Handbook" spelled out in katakana. It is equally gratifying to see what I can only assume is the Japanese translation of "Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss." It looks pretty accurate, based on my knowledge of Japanese. It is equally gratifying to, on the same cover, see James Jacobs and Erik Mona's name in katakana. And seeing the Pathfinder books over there, and Forgotten Realms and Eberron sourcebooks (many with Japanese titles)... it just makes me happy to know that SOMEONE in Japan plays the same stuff we do.

Then again, I shouldn't be too surprised. "Record of the Lodoss War" was apparently based on a 1st Edition campaign. *kicks TSR for not buying the American rights to it back in the early 90s when they had a chance*

If you're on RPG.net at all, they've talked about gaming in Japan before. There's a few that sound absolutely amazing that should get brought over here, but will probably never even be fan translated :(

No one had ever mentioned that DnD was big over there; I'm actually kind of surprised to hear that that kind of selection is there. The impression that I'd gotten was that Japan's gaming segment was pretty niche.

I was in Akihabara over the summer and visited the very same store, which has another floor dedicated to trading card games, etc. The floor which sold RPG books actually had more RPGs than I have seen in any single store in the US (and I've been to my share of game stores), probably because it is one of the only stores in Tokyo that sells those sorts of books (to my knowledge).

It's too bad that the books were all plastic-wrapped, because I would have loved to take a look inside and see how everything was translated. It also meant I didn't get much of an opportunity to see what the games that were made in Japan were like.